A.Word.A.Day --gelasin

A.Word.A.Day

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Mar 4, 2013

This week's theme
There's a word for it

This week's words
gelasin
sprezzatura
polylemma
schadenfreude
palimpsest

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

You may know it as the lowly bread clip. It closes the end of the plastic bag that holds a loaf of bread or a few pounds of potatoes. Once it has done its job, you dump it in the trash can without a second thought. But there are people who have given it a third or fourth or nth thought. They call it occlupanid. And they have come up with a whole classification for these ties.

There's a word for it. That's what you'll say when you look at this week's words. Each of these words describes a thing, idea, or feeling that may take a whole sentence to describe otherwise.

gelasin

PRONUNCIATION:

(JEL-uh-sin)

MEANING:

noun: A dimple in the cheek that appears when someone smiles.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek gelaein (to laugh), which also gave us the words agelast (one who never laughs) and hypergelast (one who laughs too much). Earliest documented use: 1608.

USAGE:

"Gelasin is this pretty little dimple of which Martial says:
His is the face less gracious
Who has not the gelasin joyous."
Laurent Joubert; Treatise on Laughter; University of Alabama Press; 1980.
Translation: Gregory David De Rocher.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Errors like straws upon the surface flow: / Who would search for pearls must dive below. -John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700)

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